Theater as Territory

This photographic essay documents the first meeting of a Brazilian theater company formed by people from multiple social, ethnic, and gender backgrounds, with significant participation from members of the queer community. The series captures dynamics of approach, listening, and collective creation during the initial process of collaborative dramaturgical construction, revealing how contemporary theater constitutes itself as a space of cultural resistance in Brazil.

The images capture liminal moments where individual and collective identities are negotiated through the body, gesture, and occupation of theatrical space. The work is part of the visual anthropology tradition that uses photography as an ethnographic tool to understand cultural practices and group formation processes. By documenting this inaugural meeting, the photographs reveal how social differences are negotiated in the performative space, highlighting theater as a territory for identity experimentation and community building.

The series questions who has the right to the stage, visibility, and the construction of one’s own narratives in the contemporary Brazilian context. By photographing these interstices — between backstage and performance, between isolation and community, between the individual and the collective — I seek to illuminate group formation processes where diversity becomes a driving force of creation and existential affirmation, directly engaging with anthropological studies on liminality, cultural performance, and community formation.

From a political perspective, the work documents not only an artistic process but acts of cultural resistance in a context where dissident bodies face growing hostility in Brazil. The photographs function as collaborative visual records that reveal how art and politics intertwine in the construction of alternative spaces of sociability, where differences are celebrated and transformed into collective creative power.